“Do you only do the right thing when Jasper or Sadie give you permission to do it?” It was a low blow, but I wasn’t wrong. And it hit its mark. “You have to be here but you don’t have to like it and you don’t have to help. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”
“All evidence to the contrary?”
“Fuck you, Terry. Let’s see how well you do against an old ass Chevy.” My grip tightened on the wheel. “I already said thanks for that save, but that doesn’t mean you can hold that shit over my head forever.”
Terry had nothing to say for the rest of the trip; that was just fine with me.
Finding Molly in Reno was harder than I anticipated. We pulled into a strip mall in a seedy part of town close to low-end motels and began canvassing door to door. The girl, if she’d been here, kept a low profile. Only a handful of people could say with any type of certainty that they’d seen her or knew her. But the answer was the same.
“Quiet girl, but I haven’t seen her around here in a few days.”
“Worked at the diner by the highway but she hasn’t been there for a few days.”
A different variation on the same answer. Every. Fucking. Time.
After a few hours of this thankless waste of time, I leaned against the trunk of my car and let out a low, frustrated sigh. My lead on Molly had, so far, turned into a big fat pile of nothing. But she’d been here, not more than forty-eight hours ago according to Rusty.
“She can’t be gone already. She can’t be,” I moaned to myself. I wouldn’t allow it. I’d turn over this whole damn town if I had to.
I felt Terry before I saw or heard him. “Maybe it’s time to call it quits?” he asked.
Of course, he’d say that. “You’d be saying that if this was Emmett?” I didn’t even open my eyes to ask the question because I already knew the answer. “You’d burn down the whole fucking world to find him. Even now, I’ll bet that’s your plan to find out who attacked him.”
“He’s my brother.”
“Yeah, well Molly is Madison’s sister and that’s enough for me.”
Opening my eyes, I looked at Terry, for the first time wondering if he was as good as my mind made him out to be. Maybe he was just like Jasper, a good man if you were part of his circle. Otherwise, you were on your own.
My heart raced as it warred with the idea of letting this man, or the idea of this man, go.
“I can drive you to the train station or the car rental place we passed on the way to the hostel. You’ll be back in Glitz before the night is over.”
I’d already planned to grab a room and the first hotel I found, stars be damned.
“You know that’s not gonna happen.” He didn’t want to be here, had no interest in helping this girl who’d suffered the way Jasper and Virgil and Cal had. Emmett, too.
“Well I’m staying here, and I don’t need you here second guessing me every step of the way, so the offer stands.”
We stared each other down for at least one full minute, my heart racing at the thought of giving up on my dreams of him. But I would.
Because I had to, not because I wanted to.
“Kat, be reasonable.”
I hated that word more than I could say. Reasonable. Fuck that. It was a word men used to keep women in line when they couldn’t be controlled. A way to make them feel crazy or hysterical, when the truth was, I was being perfectly reasonable.
“Be a fucking human being, Terry, or get gone. I’ll spend tomorrow looking for Molly myself, and if I can’t, then and only then will I find someone else to look for her. After tomorrow, got it?”
Terry nodded and my shoulders relaxed, which pissed me off.
After a long moment, he said, reluctantly, I thought, “All right.”
I gave a sharp nod before giving myself a mental pep talk.
“Get in,” I said, pointing to the car. It was time to find food and a place to sleep for the night.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Terry
“I know this is a hard ask for you with everything that’s going on, but I need you to stay with Kat.”
Jasper’s voice was low and worried because we both knew that nothing would get Kat back to Glitz other than finding Molly. Or her body.
“You can say no, absolutely brother, but I’m hoping you won’t.”
He knew I couldn’t say no to him. Especially when it came to protecting Kat.
Even if she hated me right now.
“I’m here man, whatever you need. We haven’t picked up the girl’s scent yet, but she was here. Recently.”
I wouldn’t tell Kat, but Molly’s vanishing act meant she was right to be worried.
“You know how Kat is,” he growled. “We’re all keeping an eye on Emmett, and I sent some guys to check on both of your moms. But if you don’t find anything tomorrow, I want you both back in Glitz. Period.”
That sounded like exactly what I wanted. “See you tomorrow, then.”
“Later, brother.” We ended the call and let out a deep, fortifying breath. Something I did had pissed Kat off but good. She’d barely said more than a few sentences to me in hours, and I still hadn’t figured out what I had done.
She sat inside the diner; her phone pressed to her ear while she ate a stack of pancakes with a salad on the side.
“Jasper is giving us the night.”
Kat looked up with a slightly annoyed expression on her face.
“I found us a suite at a nearby lodge, which means we both get a bed this time around. Ready to go?”
I guess she’s still upset. “After I finish eating, sure.”
“Okay.” Her words were short but not clipped, enough for me to know that she was pissed.
I dug into the meatloaf and
